evolution

Now with twice the insanity and half the talent.

Note that selling fuel oil to American states now counts as a “belligerent and hostile foreign policy,” which is to say that it cuts into the grotesquely criminal “profits” the frat pals of President Bush are carrying off by the trainload under the “conservative” model of the “free market.” (Those “profits” totalled more than $10 billion last quarter, for those few readers not mesmerized by American Idol.) By any rational measure, the Bush Administration is the largest and most successful criminal conspiracy in human history; if there were an honest U.S. Attorney left in the country–there isn’t–the whole sleazy bunch, starting w/ President Bush and VP Cheney’s-Got-A-Gun, would under a RICO indictment.

And:

But Chavez hasn’t just flipped off the Bush administration–he’s flipped off Big Oil, and Big Oil has been issuing marching orders to the United States government for the past six years. Terrorists flying planes into buildings don’t attract Big Oil’s malign attention–9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to the oil business–but a crazed leftist head of state undercutting their price-fixing is truly dancing w/ death. If Big Oil decides it’s had enough of Chavez, Venezuela will be looking for a new president before the end of the year.

More World Company-subsidized ranting from your insufferable-wiener-in-chief, including Chavez’s attitude toward the free press.

UPDATE: Now a front-page feature!

UPDATE 2: Man, the crazy stuff you can dig up in my archive…

1. “BRAWK! Toby wanna go getta spark plug for the DeWalt Paws-all?”
2. “You know, AWK! I’m really not into the handcuffs tonight, baby.”
3. “Clean-up on aisle cleavage! BRAWWWK!”
4. “Oh, you’re good with D-O-Gs. I thought I heard an ‘N’ in there…”
5. “It takes about two weeks to teach basic commands such as sit, stay, come, lie down, and to BRAWK! them and teach them to walk with a leash.” *
6. “That’s not a Snausage. THIS is a Snausage.”
7. “Don’t BRAWWK! the soap!”

[story]

I’ve got nineteen invites to Newsvine left to give. Send me e-mail if you’re interested. You can also leave a comment in this post.

Today, evolution picks up its machete and pith helmet, attempting to hack its way through the NSA “spy” story that has been the subject of countless news stories and media polls.

Much has been written in the blogosphere on this topic. Minds are made up, positions are hardened, and the battle lines have been drawn. It is now the topic of a “grass-roots” letter-writing campaign organized by Democratic activists targeted at Kansans, because Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) is Senate Intelligence committee chairman. The Kansas right-wing blogosphere, on this topic, is nowhere to be found; and so I sally forth alone.

I, however, am going to start from the beginning. The result of that will be that I am months behind others, and that you may see points made here that you feel have been refuted elsewhere; but I feel it’s important to start from the beginning.

So, let’s start from the beginning, with the New York Times story that touched it off:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

“This is really a sea change,” said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. “It’s almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches.”

The story is very long, but you should take the time to read it all.

Some thoughts (again in the absence of what has happened since) follow.

First, the program did produce positive results. From the eleventh paragraph:

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

Second, the timing of this story leaves questions in my mind. For one, one of the authors of this piece, James Risen, had a book coming out about this topic. The Times says it sat on the story for a year in order to “conduct additional reporting” in the light of the fact that this program was classified (which, in my mind, is another issue regarding the legality of this leak) and because the White House asked them not to reveal information that would jeopardize on-going investigations. The book, which is said to contain much the same information as this Times story, was submitted to its publisher by Risen three months before this story ran. For another, this story — after having been sat on for a year — was released a day after successful Iraqi elections, and also as a crucial vote was scheduled on the PATRIOT Act. I think that anyone who thinks that is a coincidence is either naive or willfully blind.

Finally (for today), just what exactly am I supposed to be mad about (on the basis of this story — remember, we’re starting from the beginning)? Title 50, Chapter 36, Subchapter I, section 1802 of U.S. code says:

(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and
(C) the proposed minimization procedures with respect to such surveillance meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 1801 (h) of this title; and
if the Attorney General reports such minimization procedures and any changes thereto to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at least thirty days prior to their effective date, unless the Attorney General determines immediate action is required and notifies the committees immediately of such minimization procedures and the reason for their becoming effective immediately.

Some people say that the definition of “foriegn power” which is in section 1801 of the same code does not include al Qaeda or other “stateless” terrorists. What if those terrorists receive backing from some nation or nations? What about from agents of those nations acting “alone”? I plan to address that question as best I can in later posts.

Also needing to be addressed are possible motivations for his critics, which can be, in most cases, summed up by opportunism, political posturing, the cachet offered by an “activist media” attempting to “seek the truth” — a media many of the political posturers are an enthusiastic part of, and a desire to see BushCo dragged off in chains, because Goddammit, he’s so…. evil, and he positively must be guilty of something; and those who simply do not believe that the War on Terror is an actual “war” and is akin to criminal enforcement, like the “War on Drugs” (which is a misnomer, describing something that is clearly not a real war, and one which I have my own mixed feelings about at that). The latter sort there is simply no argument possible with.

None of that is to suggest that there are not legitimate areas for this Administration to come in for criticism on this or any other issue, as I think I’ve demonstrated in many other posts. There are, and there are legitimate legal questions here; all of which I hope to address in future posts. I require much more information before putting such a neat bow on the whole thing.

UPDATE: Current news and questions relating to the Times’s motivations.

I defended the deal as being, all things considered, okay for security (since no changes would have been made) and good for business. Sadly, however, I think this analysis of the news that the Dubai company in question participates in the anti-Israel boycott is dead-on, and that my defense will have been in vain.

It’s too bad, because I think that economic liberalizations and a move toward free markets is one of the fastest ways for a country to become more liberal generally, especially in a region badly in need of liberalism. As long as destroying Israel is more important than that, however, it will never be.

UPDATE: Now comes this, by way of LGF, that Dubai Ports World may have been tacitly doing business with Israel.

This week’s RINO Sightings are up, courtesy of the Ex-Donkey.

A student guest on a K-State student-run conservative-talk radio show made a comment (That’s right, I said “a conservative radio show on a college campus.” Who knew?) regarding the movie Brokeback Mountain, calling it “Bareback Mountain”. The host later apologized (for the guest) on-air for the comment (by the guest!).

End of the story, right? In a country and a world governed by identity politics?

Not hardly:

“The whole tone was pretty condescending to gay and lesbian people,” said Christopher Renner, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition of the Flint Hills [website].

The comments were made last week during the show’s 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday time slot. A student responded with a complaint, and the executive student staff that runs the station and faculty advisers began considering a response.

“To me, an apology wasn’t enough,” said Steve Smethers, journalism school associate director.

Legally, Smethers said, the Federal Communications Commission requires stations in such instances to acknowledge the complaint, take action if needed, and record the complaint and response in the station’s public file. He said the complaint prompted discussions about ethical responsibilities.

Two days after the comments were made, radio station staff members received sensitivity training during a weekly meeting, and more training is being planned. The guest who made the comments won’t appear again on the show, and the host apologized on Tuesday’s broadcast, said Aaron Leiker, station manager and graduate teaching assistant. Despite requests, however, “The Right Wing Conspiracy” won’t be canceled.

To Renner, the apology made on Tuesday’s broadcast lacked sincerity. And he believes K-State’s school of journalism needs to do more to teach students about diversity, he said, noting an outcry two years ago when the student newspaper, The Collegian, didn’t cover the Big 12 Conference of Black Student Government at K-State. The newspaper and radio station are associated with the journalism school, but all students can participate in the programs.

The outcry over the BSG is something I talked about here. In that case, the Collegian’s (the campus newspaper) news director, in the opinion of the Black Student Government, failed to adequately cover a conference K-State on black leadership. The news director was fired because of this, and the newspaper’s staff were compelled to undergo a round of “diversity training.” Fired, despite that the BSG apparently did not issue a press release for the event, and despite no evidence (at least none printed or aired in any media outlet) that there was a systematic effort to ignore “black events”; and despite a public apology and additional “diversity training.”

His offense? He ran afoul of the school’s diversity coordinator, associate provost Myra Gordon. At Virginia Tech, Gordon had overseen a controversial faculty diversity initiative that built off the writing of Cathy Trower, who has argued that “merit is socially constructed by the dominant coalition” and that white male (and only white male) job candidates should be required to demonstrate a commitment to diversity before being hired.

At K-St., Gordon backed the president of the school’s Black Student Union, Natalie Rolfe, who complained after the Collegian failed to cover the Big 12 Conference on Black Student Government, which Kansas State hosted in February 2004. (The article doesn’t mention whether the BSU issued a press release before the event, but it appears that the organization did not.) In response to Rolfe’s complaint, the newspaper’s editors publicly apologized for not covering the event, developed a new system for reporting to ensure that all campus events received proper coverage, and planned “additional diversity training.”

These moves did not satisfy Rolfe, who said that she wanted “a system to make sure the paper’s more friendly to the campus (interesting conception of a newspaper’s role). She then organized a protest march, with 50 students wearing T-shirts reading “W.W.R.G.?”, for “When Will Ron Go?” Gordon, meanwhile, told Rolfe, “I’m backing you all the way,” and publicly stated that Johnson should be fired. (Gordon refused to comment for the Chronicle story.) Johnson then was removed from his position, after the college dean issued a report accusing him of a poor attitude in dealing with students — even though the dean hadn’t interviewed any of the students on the newspaper’s staff, and has refused to say with which students he did speak.

I mention this event because the aforementioned Christopher Renner of the Kansas Equality Coalition did. The difference is that he — and hence the Topeka Capitol-Journal misrepresented the event as indicative of the lack of “diversity” in the journalism department; when, in fact, the whole incident was a game of politically-correct musical chairs, where university officials scrambled for a seat at the “diversity” table, and none of them wanted to be left standing holding the “I’m A Racist!” sign at the end.

As for the joke itself, it was dumb and fairly predictable; tame by evolution’s high standard. I wouldn’t have made it, again mostly because it’s too easy; but also because it strikes the wrong tone for serious political debate. A public apology should have sufficed. Not enough, say the advocates of group politics; the wrong thoughts must be suppressed.

[All emphases and bracketed expressions are mine.]